The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (reading a book txt) 📕

With reluctance, Samael followed Rune as he flew off in another direction. Deliberately, Rune gained height. As silent as they flew, at altitude and on a moonless night, they were invisible.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Samael flared his wings, slamming his body to a stop. “The hell you say.”

“Meira’s taking them somewhere.”

Every cell in Samael’s body wanted to tackle his old mentor and beat him until he revealed every detail of what was happening. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even ignite his fire in warning. The glow would give away their own position to anyone tracking them. “Tell me there’s a fucking plan.”

“Yeah. Get my people out safely. That’s the fucking plan.”

Samael bit back a growl of frustration. After this was over, and Meira was safe, he and Rune were going to have a reckoning.

Rune turned and continued the journey, and Samael had no choice but to follow since no one else was communicating with him. Every instinct told him to find his mate. He had to cut the thought off or he’d turn and go back to the mountain and take it apart rock by rock until he got to her.

Except she might not be there.

That’s when he heard it. The hushed whoosh of dragon wings. At least five. A thousand feet below them. “Rune.”

“I know.”

Without another thought, they both held their wings steady, gliding silently on the currents of air. Remaining as still as possible, Samael slowly lowered his head to scan below them, tuning in to the sound of the dragons below.

“I make five,” Rune said.

“Six. A dark-green fucker is bringing up the tail.” Like a black dragon, at night that color was harder to spot. “Not ours?” Samael asked.

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“They’re searching for us.” Otherwise, they’d be at the mountain.

“Agreed.”

A flash of dark gold, nearer to bronze in color, caught his eye, and Samael stared harder at the dragon in the lead.

“Shit. I think that’s Brock Hagan.”

“The son of the previous gold king? You sure?”

“No. But he came after us in Kansas, too.”

“No way could he get here from the U.S. that fast. It would take too long to fly that distance.”

“I know. But I’m pretty damn sure that’s him.”

“Fuck me.”

Exactly. “What’s the play?” He might not like it, but Rune knew this region and Samael did not. They had three options—lead the attackers away, giving Meira and the people she was with more time to get away. Let them go past, unaware of their presence above, and head in a new direction. Or attack.

He and his dragon were not on the same page as to which plan they should go with, the dragon wanting blood on his tongue.

Rune decided for them. “They have no idea where we are. We should head back to the mountain. We’ll get in through the new passage, see if there’s anyone left.”

Given that Meira was operating on fumes, she might not be able to get everyone where she wanted. The plan was solid, and maybe the only one the animal side of him would accept over blood and carnage. The draw of getting to his mate was enough.

As one, Samael and Rune tipped their wings ever so slightly, making a wide, sweeping turn with the agony of slowness because the move was more silent. They wouldn’t take a direct route back to the mountain, instead taking their time and laying false trails for the fuckers below and any others that might be out there.

This was going to be a long night.

Chapter Twelve

The wail of a siren had Meira jackknifing in the bed to put her hands over her ears. Before she could call out for her uncle, an unfamiliar voice came over a loudspeaker, one of the men who ran this mountain.

“We have a dragon fire. Large. Situated fifty miles west near the town. Holding to determine cause.”

Only the alarms kept going.

She went to throw back the covers only to have a thick arm wrap around her waist from behind, yanking her painfully against a hard wall of chest with a knife to her throat.

“Scream and I slit you from ear to ear and drink your phoenix blood,” came a low-voiced threat. Almost a whisper, probably so Tyrek wouldn’t hear.

Only, instead of a fear-crazed whimper—the response that would have been normal for her not that long ago—Meira stuffed her fear into a box and shoved that box behind a wall, thinking of Sam and how he turned coldly purposeful both the day the fake Gorgon died in her fire and when Brock came for her in her home.

Somehow that worked, her mind clicking on like the whir of a booting computer. This person had come for her. He knew she was a phoenix. Which meant he also knew what she was worth. No way would he kill her.

A scream burst from her, making her throat raw.

“You bitch—”

Something or someone yanked her assailant from her, the knife slicing through the first few layers of skin on the side of her throat before falling to the ground with a clatter of metal on stone. Meira turned with a gasp, hand to her neck to test the deepness of the cut, to see Tyrek, partially shifted and grappling with a man dressed all in black. With a roar of threat that shook the furniture around her, her uncle speared the barbed end of his tail through the man’s gut, hoisting him into the air.

The skewered man gurgled before going limp and silent. With a flick, Tyrek tossed him to the ground, his tail absorbing back into his human form in a misty haze. There then gone.

“The others will have heard you,” he said. “I doubt he’s the only one. Let’s go—”

With the crunching of bones and a grunt of agony, a hand burst through Tyrek’s chest, his beating heart clutched in a partially shifted talon. “You’re not the only one who can do damage in human form, old man,” a voice like a hiss snarled from behind